The Last Continent

Page 38

The voice in the Bursar's head thought: but a bird must fly. Where are the wings? This one's standing on the ground. You don't see the wings,' said the Dean, and then looked puzzled at having answered a question no one had asked. 'Blast! You know, it's harder than it looks, drawing on a rock . . .' I always see the wings, thought the voice in the Bursar's head. The Bursar fumbled for his dried frog pill bottle. The voices were never usually this precise. 'Very flat bird,' said Ridcully. 'Come on, Dean, our friend here isn't very happy. Let's go and work out a really good boat spell . . .'
'Looks more like a weasel to me,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'You've got the tail wrong.'
'The stick slipped.'
'A duck's fatter than that,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'You shouldn't try to show off. Dean. When was the last time you saw a duck that didn't have peas round it?'
'Last week, actually!'
'Yes, we had crispy duck. With plum sauce, I now recall. Here, let me have a go . . .'
'Now you've given it three legs!'
'I did ask for the stick! You snatched it away!'
'Now look,' said Ridcully. 'I'm a man who knows his ducks, and what you've got there is laughable. Give me that . . . thank you. You do a beak like this 'That's on the wrong end and it's too big.'
'You think that's a beak?'
'Look, all three of you are barking up the wrong tree here. Give me that stick . . .'
'Ah, but, you see, ducks don't bark! Hah! There's no need to snatch like that—' Unseen University was built of stone – so built out of stone that in fact there were many places where it was hard to tell where wild rock ended and domesticated stone began. It was hard to imagine what else you could build a university out of. If Rincewind had set out to list possible materials he wouldn't have included corrugated iron sheets. In response to some sort of wizardly ancestral memory, though, the sheets around the gates had been quite expertly bent and hammered into the shape of a stone arch. Over it, burned into the thin metal, were the words: NULLUS ANXIETAS.
'I shouldn't be surprised, should I?' he said. 'No worries.' The gates, which were also made of corrugated iron nailed to bits of wood by a man using secondhand nails, were firmly shut. A crowd of people were hammering on them. 'Looks like a lot of other people have the same idea,' said Neilette. 'There'll be another way in,' said Rincewind, walking away. 'There'll be an alley . . . Ah, there it is. Now, these aren't stone walls, so there won't be removable bricks, which means . . .' He prodded at the tin sheets, and one of them wobbled. 'Ah, yes. A loose sheet which swings aside so you can get back in after hours.'
'How did you know that?'
'This is a university, isn't it? Come on.' A message had been chalked beside the loose sheet. ' “Nulli Sheilae sanguineae,” ' Rincewind read aloud. 'But your name's not Sheila, so we're probably okay.'
'If it means what I think it means, it means they don't allow women,' said Neilette. 'You should've brought Darleen.'
'Sorry?'
'Forget I mentioned it.' Somewhat to Rincewind's surprise there was a short, pleasant lawn on the other side of the fence, illuminated by the light from a large low building. All the buildings were low but had big wide roofs, giving the effect you might get if someone stepped on a lot of square mushrooms. If they had been painted, it had been an historical event, probably coming somewhere between Fire and the Invention of the Wheel. There was a tower. It was about twenty feet high. 'I don't call this much of a university,' said Rincewind. He allowed himself a touch of smugness. 'Twenty feet high? I could pi— I could spit from the top of it. Oh well . . .' He made for the doorway, just as the light grew a lot brighter and was tinted with octarine, the eighth colour that was intimately associated with magic. The doors themselves were shut fast. He banged on them, making them rattle. 'Fraternal greetings, brothers!' he shouted. 'I bring you— Good grie—' The world simply changed. One moment he was standing in front of a rusting door and the next he was in a circle with half a dozen wizards watching him. He caught his balance.
'Well, full marks for effort,' he managed. 'Where I come from, and you can call me Mister Boring if you like, we just open the door.'
'Stone the crows, but we're getting good at this,' said a wizard. And they were wizards. Rincewind was in no doubt of it. They had proper pointy hats, although the brims were larger than anything he'd seen without flying buttresses. Their robes weren't much more than waist length, and below them they wore shorts, long grey socks, and big leather sandals. A lot of this was not the typical wizarding outfit as he'd grown up to understand it, but they were still wizards. They had that unmistakable hot-air-balloon-about- to-take-off look. The apparent leader of the group nodded at Rincewind. 'Good evening, Mister Boring. I must say you got here a lot quicker than we expected.' Rincewind felt intuitively that saying 'I was just outside the door' was not a good idea. 'Er, I had an assisted passage,' he said. 'He doesn't look very demonic,' said a wizard. 'Remember that last one we called up? Six eyes and three—' The really good ones can disguise themselves, Dean.'
'Then this one must be a bloody genius, Archchancellor.' Thank you very much,' said Rincewind. The Archchancellor nodded at him. He was, of course, elderly, with a face that looked as though it had been screwed up and then smoothed out, and a short, greying beard. There was something oddly familiar that Rincewind couldn't quite place. 'We've called you up, Boring,' said the man, 'because we want to know what's happened to the water.' It's all gone, has it?' said Rincewind. 'Thought so.'
'It can't go' said the Dean. 'It's water. There's always water, if you go down deep enough.'
'But if we go any deeper we're going to give an elephant a bloody nasty shock,' said the Archchancellor. 'So we—' There was a clang as the doors hit the floor. The wizards backed away. 'What the hell's that?' said one of them. 'Oh, that's my Luggage,' said Rincewind. 'It's made out of—'
'Not the box on legs! Isn't that a woman?'
'Don't ask him, he's not very quick at that sort of thing,' said Neilette, stepping in behind the Luggage. 'Sorry, but Trunkie got impatient.'
'We can't have women in the University!' shouted the Dean. 'They'll want to drink sherry!'
'No worries,' said the Archchancellor, waving a hand irritably. 'What's happened to the water. Boring?'
'It's all been used up, I suppose,' said Rincewind. 'So how can we get some more?'
'Why does everyone ask me? Don't you have some rainmaking spells or something?'
'There's that word again,' said the Dean. 'Water sprinkling out of the sky, eh? I'll believe that when I see it!'
'We tried making one of these – what were they called? Big white bags of water? The things some of the sailors say they see in the sky?'
'Clouds.'
'Right. They don't stay up, Boring. We threw one off the tower last week and it hit the Dean.'
'I've never believed those old stories,' said the Dean. 'And I reckon you mongrels waited till I was walking past.'
'You don't have to make them, they just happen,' said Rincewind. 'Look, I don't know how to make it rain. I thought any halfway decent wizard knew how to do a rainmaking spell,' he added, as someone who wouldn't know where to start. 'Really?' said the Archchancellor, with dangerous brightness. 'No offence meant,' said Rincewind hurriedly. 'I'm sure this is a very good university, considering. Obviously it's not a real one, but it's amazingly good in the circumstances.'
'What's wrong with it?' said the Archchancellor. 'Well . . . your tower's a little bit on the small side, isn't it? I mean, even compared to the buildings around here? Not that there's—'
'I think we ought to show Mister Boring our tower,' said the Archchancellor. 'I don't think he's taking us seriously.'
'I've seen it,' said Rincewind. 'From the top?'
'No, obviously not from the top—'
'We haven't got time for this, Archchancellor,' said a small wizard. 'Let's send this wozza back to Hell and find something better.'
'Excuse me?' said Rincewind. 'By “Hell” do you mean some hot red place?'
'Yes!'
'Really? How do Ecksians know when they've got there? The beer's warmer?'
'No more arguing. This one turned up very fast when we did the summoning, so this is the one we need,' said the Archchancellor. 'Come along, Boring. This won't take a minute.' Ponder shook his head and wandered over to the fire. Mrs Whitlow was sitting demurely on a rock. In front of her, getting as close to the fire as possible, was the Librarian. He was still extremely small. Maybe his temporal gland had to take longer to work itself out, Ponder thought. 'What are the gentlemen doing?' said Mrs Whitlow. She had to raise her voice above the argument, but Mrs Whitlow would still have said. 'Is there some difficulty?' if she saw the wizards out on the lawn throwing fireballs at the monsters from the Dungeon Dimensions. She liked to be told these things. They've found a man drawing the most alive-looking pictures I've ever seen,' said Ponder. 'So now they're trying to teach him Art. By committee.'
'The gentlemen always take an interest,' said Mrs Whitlow. They always interfere,' said Ponder. 'I don't know what it is about wizards, they can't just watch. So far they're arguing about how to draw a duck and frankly I don't think a duck has four legs, which is what it's got so far. Honestly, Mrs Whitlow, they're like kittens in a feather-plucking shed . . . What's that?' The Librarian had tipped up the leather bag lying by the fire and was testing the contents for taste, in the way of young mammals everywhere. He picked up a flat, bent piece of wood, painted in lines of many colours – far more pigments than the old man had been using to paint, and Ponder wondered why. He tested it for palatability, banged it on the ground in a vaguely hopeful way, and threw it away. Then he pulled out a flat oval of wood on a piece of string, and tried chewing the string. 'Is that a yo-yo?' said Mrs Whitlow. 'We used to call them bullroarers when I was a kid,' said Ponder. 'You whirl it around over your head to make a funny noise.' He waved his hand vaguely in the air. 'Eeek?'
'Ooh, isn't that sweet? He's trying to do what you do!'
The Librarian tried to whirl the string, wrapped it round his face and hit himself on the back of the head. 'Oh, the poor little thing! Take it off him, Mister Stibbons, do.' The Librarian bared some small fangs as Ponder unwound the string. 'I hope he's going to grow up soon,' he said. 'Otherwise the Library will be filled up with cardboard books about bunnies It really was a very stubby tower. The base was stonework, but about halfway the builders had got fed up and resorted to rusted tin sheets nailed on to a wooden framework. One rickety ladder led up. 'Very impressive,' sighed Rincewind. 'The view's even better from the top. Go on up.' The ladder shook under Rincewind's weight until he pulled himself up on to the planks, where he lay down and panted. Must be the beer and the excitement, he told himself. One short ladder shouldn't do this to me. 'Bracing air up here, isn't it?' said the Archchancellor, walking to the edge and waving a hand towards the city. 'Oh, certainly,' said Rincewind, tottering towards the corrugated battlements. 'Why, I expect you can see all the way to the gr— Aaargh!' The Archchancellor grabbed him and pulled him back. 'That's— It's—' Rincewind gasped. 'Want to go back down again?' Rincewind glared at the wizard and inched his way carefully back to the stairs. He looked down, ready at an instant's notice to draw his head back, and carefully counted the steps. Then he walked back gingerly to the parapet and risked looking over the edge. There was the fiery speck of the burning brewery. There was Bugarup, and its harbour . . . Rincewind raised his gaze. There was the red desert, glittering under the moonlight. 'How high is this?' he croaked. 'On the outside? About half a mile, we think,' said the Archchancellor.